I share the real-life stories that inspired my books, as well as other travel adventures, and posts on the food, history, and culture of the Southwest United States.

Friday, July 1, 2016

The Skeleton Canyon Treasure: action, adventure and #romance

My next romantic
suspense, The Skeleton Canyon Treasure,
will be out July 15!

The Skeleton Canyon
Treasure

Camille Dagneau – beautiful, brilliant, and prickly – isn’t
quick to trust, especially when a strange man has broken into her machine shop
at night. But Ryan McGloin insists he’s merely looking for his missing uncle,
who has disappeared while hunting for a lost treasure. He believes Camie is the
key to finding the treasure, and his uncle. Camie can ignore the attraction she
feels, but she won’t pass up the chance for an adventure.

Following the clues in the missing man’s journal will take
Camie, Ryan, and the cat Tiger on a trail through New Mexico and Arizona.
They’ll visit the Tombstone graveyard at night, uncover clues in museums, and
ultimately wind up in Skeleton Canyon, where rumor says nineteenth-century
cowboy bandits secreted their treasure in a cave. To rescue Ryan’s uncle,
they’ll face steep cliffs, twisty tunnels, and worse dangers in human form, but
trusting each other may be the biggest challenge. And they’re running out of
time ….

If you love suspense and romance, don’t miss this gripping
adventure! The Southwest Treasure Hunters novels include The Mad Monk’s Treasure and The
Dead Man’s Treasure. Each novel stands alone in this series mixing action
and adventure with PG romance.

Chapter One

Camie let herself into the darkened building, reveling in
the silence. At 10 PM on a Friday, the engineering department was abandoned, exactly
the way she liked it. A few hours of work without distractions and she’d get
her invention running.

A faint light shone in the darkened hallway. The glow
spilled through the small square of glass in her door, a warning beacon coming
from inside her machine shop. She
hesitated. Had she forgotten to turn off the light when she left for dinner?
Plausible but unlikely. Slapping the light switch on the way out was habit, and
she’d been extra careful since the break-in a few nights earlier.

A few other people had keys to the college machine shop, but
the cleaning staff would be long gone, and her student interns spent Friday
nights at the bar. Camie returned after hours to work on her own projects
because inspiration required solitude. So why was her light on?

She crept forward, as silent as the sleeping building around
her. The ten-inch window was cloudy with age and threaded with wire mesh, but
it didn’t completely hide the sight within. A large man stood on the far side
of the room, hunched over one of her workbenches. She didn’t recognize him.
Easily several inches over six feet and a good 220 pounds of mostly muscle, he
would stand out in any crowd. Among the young geniuses of a science and
engineering college, he was a mountain lion among prairie dogs.

Her eyes narrowed and she gave a low growl. What was he
doing here, in her machine shop, messing with her equipment? He had to be
connected to the earlier theft. Why would he come back when he already had her
invention? He couldn’t know she’d already started rebuilding it. Maybe he
wanted to steal her notes and the provisional patent application forms. Without
them, she’d have a much harder time proving she’d been the original inventor.

She considered her options, calling campus security or the police
being the most obvious. Campus security would be faster, but the police would
have guns. Problem was, she’d left her phone inside the machine shop. She’d
have to leave to find another phone, and he might escape in the meantime, with
her notes, and the new version of her device. She didn’t trust the authorities
to track him down once he got out of the building. More likely they’d take a
report and do nothing. And she did not want to start over from scratch yet
again.

And then the man actually reached out and picked up her
baby, her new version of the invention, only partway rebuilt. All thought of
options and smart choices vanished.

She barreled through the door.

The man spun around, still holding her machine. At least he
didn’t drop it, and his hands were occupied so he couldn’t easily go for a
weapon. But if he tried to get past her, she’d have to risk damaging her
invention in order to stop him.

He gaped at her, several expressions flitting across his
face as if unsure which one belonged. Finally he settled into a cocky grin. It
didn’t make him good looking. But despite his size and her own keyed-up nerves,
she didn’t get a sense of threat. She was usually good at reading people that
way.

Still, she didn’t relax. “Well?”

He looked momentarily startled. What kind of greeting had he
expected, a warm welcome?

He gave her a careful once over and then something like
recognition lit in his eyes. He said cautiously, “You wouldn’t happen to be C.
Dagneau?”

That was how she was listed on her nameplate outside the
door. Ah, of course. He’d assumed that anyone who ran a machine shop had to be
a man. Jerk.

She nodded once.

He turned and put her machine on the long table. She shifted
so she could see enough of his hands to make sure they stayed empty. He wore
jeans and a T-shirt, fitting closely enough she didn’t think he had anything in
his pockets besides a wallet. She shot a glance at her filing cabinet, closed,
and as far she could tell, still locked. Her notes appeared to be safe.

“What are you doing here?” she snarled.

“I was looking for you, actually.”

She raised one eyebrow. She’d spent weeks perfecting that
particular move when she was fifteen, and it still came in handy when she
needed to express skeptical disdain. “You expected to find me in the shop on a
Friday night?”

He shrugged. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

Couldn’t argue with that logic. She tried again. “How did
you get in?”

He hesitated a fraction too long. “The door was unlocked.”

She studied him, but the cocky grin was back, covering up
any lies with attitude. He had the face of an Irish boxer. Not ugly, exactly,
but definitely not handsome. Not that it mattered either way.

She knew she’d locked the door behind her. She remembered
reaching back to twist the handle, testing it. The lock was loose since it had
been damaged during the previous break-in and not yet replaced. Someone could
have popped the lock with a credit card or a little force, but she doubted he
could have gotten through without knowing he was breaking in. One chance in
twenty maybe.

And she wasn’t ready to give up the offensive. “So you found
me. Now what?” She crossed her arms under her breasts. His gaze flicked down for
a moment but returned to her face before the perusal could get rude.

“It’s a bit complicated. How about a cup of coffee or
something?”

“How about you tell me why you’re in my office in the middle
of the night?”

“You must keep early hours. It’s barely past ten.”

She rolled her eyes. “Get to the point.”

“All right.” He leaned back against the workbench and
crossed his arms, but where her stance was intentionally aggressive, his at
least pretended to be relaxed. Still he studied her without speaking, trying to
decide how to handle her.

She didn’t like being handled. She grabbed her cell phone
from where it was plugged in near the door and started tapping the screen.

That got him moving. He took a step toward her. “OK, I’m
looking for someone.”

“A minute ago you were looking for me.”

He blew out a breath. “My uncle. He’s missing and I’m
worried something happened to him. The trail led me here. I wasn’t sure at
first which side you were on, and that’s why I wanted to look around before
talking to you. But now that I see you, I can tell you wouldn’t have had
anything to do with his disappearance.” His blue eyes twinkled, and the
confident smile gave him a certain appeal. But if he thought she’d fall for
shallow flattery, he was much mistaken. Even assuming one could consider it flattering
to be told, “You’re probably too harmless to have kidnapped my uncle.”

She was sure he was lying about something, and probably
about everything. His appearance shortly after the theft of her invention, a
machine that might be worth millions, could not be a coincidence. One chance in
10,000 maybe. He, or his uncle if he really had an uncle, had to be connected
somehow.

If she could figure out how, she might get her invention
back. Let him keep underestimating her, as most men did. Camie turned on her
own charm. She flashed a smile that had him blinking as if the light were too
bright. “Let’s get that cup of coffee, and you can tell me about it.” That
would get him out of her shop, and into a public place where it would be easier
to get help if needed.

He nodded. “Lead the way.”

Except there wasn’t any place to get coffee on campus on a
Friday night. The disadvantage of a small town with a small school. She wasn’t
about to get in a car with him, or let him out of her sight if they took
separate vehicles. Since “coffee” was nothing more than an excuse, she led the
way to the student center. No food or drink service at that time, but at least
a few students would be hanging around, watching the big-screen TV in the
lounge or playing pool in the game room down the hall.

Camie dropped into one of the soft chairs clustered near the
main doors. No one else was in the foyer, but the glass windows meant anyone
outside could see them, including campus security when they made their rounds.
The spot provided plenty of privacy without the isolation of her building. She
gestured to the man as he sat across from her. “Explain. You might start with
your name.”

“Ah, didn’t we get to that? I’m Ryan MacAllister.” He
grinned. “Age 32. Occupation, mining geologist. Currently between contract
jobs. References available upon request.”

She almost asked to see a driver’s license and those
references. But that could wait. Better to let him think she trusted everything
he said for the moment. “Tell me about your uncle, Ryan.”

He hesitated, but this time she didn’t get the impression he
was stalling or making up lies. Rather, he didn’t seem to know how to start.
Finally he said, “He’s brilliant. A genius. But, well, he doesn’t quite fit in
with normal society.”

Camie nodded. A few of her geek friends fit that profile.
Some people would say she did as well. She didn’t consider it a bad thing,
since “normal society” tended to suck.

“His hobby is treasure hunting.”

Camie tensed slightly, but she thought she hid her reaction
well enough. Things were beginning to make sense.

“He’s always chasing after some treasure or another, trying
to put together clues from old manuscripts, sort out rumors from facts, and so
on. Once in a while, rarely, he’s actually found something.”

“What has he been working on lately?”

“The Skeleton Canyon treasure.” He snapped the phrase and
stared at her, as if expecting to surprise her into some kind of admission.
When she simply gazed back, he added, “Heard of it?”

She shook her head. Her friend Erin was the expert when it
came to history and legend. Camie was in charge of the technology, and she had wilderness
experience that came in handy. Together they’d found one long-lost treasure
several years before and gotten some fame for their success, but since then they’d
done no more than offer occasional advice on treasure hunting. It wasn’t a
vocation, or even a serious hobby.

He watched her for several more seconds, eyes narrowed in
suspicion, before he went on. “Skeleton Canyon isn’t too far from here.
Southeastern Arizona, near the New Mexico border. But no one knows where
exactly the treasure is, of course. My uncle was trying to piece together some
clues. He kept a journal. A few days ago, I received the journal in the mail.
No explanation except for a note that said to hold onto it for him.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Wasn’t that the plot of the third Indiana
Jones movie?”

Ryan shrugged. “Maybe that’s where he got the idea. Anyway,
in the normal course of things, I might only hear from my uncle once or twice a
year. I wouldn’t worry, or even notice, if I hadn’t heard from him. But this
got me wondering. I tried to track him down. Not easy for someone with no
permanent address. But he does have a cell phone. My mother, his sister,
insisted on it. The deal is that he’s supposed to check his messages twice a
week, no matter what, and respond within a day. I left a message three days ago.”

“That’s not so long.”

He shook his head, looking honestly worried. “A day late, I
could understand. Maybe he’s somewhere in the wilderness where he didn’t have
reception. Maybe he forgot what day it was. But it’s been too long. Yesterday I
started reading through his journal, trying to make sense of things. Today I
followed the trail this far, but now I need help.”

She studied him. He’d dropped the cocky charm that had
grated on her nerves, leaving something appealing. But the puzzle was still
missing a lot of pieces. “What makes you think your uncle came here?”

“He said as much.” His eyes narrowed and he leaned forward,
as if he’d caught her in a lie and was going in for the kill. “One of the last
entries in the journal said ‘New Mexico Science and Engineering College –
Dagneau has what I need.’”

He glared at her, as if waiting for her to break down and
confess everything, whatever crimes he thought she’d committed. She studied him
with a slight smile to show she wouldn’t be disconcerted so easily. She said
almost casually, “Earlier this week someone broke into the machine shop. They
stole something of mine. Your uncle part of that?”

He drew back. “Uncle Donnie isn’t a thief.”

“Ah. I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it.”

He frowned. “What was stolen?”

“A machine that can see under the ground.”

“You mean like Ground Penetrating Radar?”

“This doesn’t use radar. It’s better.”

He shrugged. “My uncle isn’t a thief. If he thought this
wondrous machine could be useful, he’d try to buy or rent one.”

“There only is one – mine.” She leaned forward, glaring. “And
I want it back.”

“You have the only one in existence?” He gave her a
skeptical look. “What makes this one machine in all the world so special?”

“It’s a lot cheaper and more portable than GPR. One person
can carry it. And it picks up on different things than radar. It’s more like an
ultrasound for the ground.”

Ryan frowned. “I haven’t heard of anything like that on the
market, or even in development. Nothing small and cheap, anyway, nothing an
amateur working alone could afford and use.”

“Of course not. I just built it.”

He studied her, and she could almost see the wheels turning
in his brain. He seemed surprised by her claims, but that didn’t prove he hadn’t
known about her invention. Maybe he was merely surprised that a pretty, young,
blond woman had invented it.

Finally he said, “If you have something like that, I can see
why my uncle wanted to find you. The Skeleton Canyon treasure is supposed to be
hidden in a cave, possibly with a collapsed entrance.”

“Yes, my machine would work for that. If you were in the
right area, you could identify empty spaces underground.” No point in hiding
that fact now, with the horse long gone from the barn.

“But is it really small enough? Portable even over rough
ground?”

“Absolutely. One person can carry it easily enough, all day,
if they’re fit. The question is, who carried it away from here that night?”

Ryan slumped back. “I’m sure my uncle wouldn’t have stolen
your machine. He’s a fanatic, but he’s not a thief. He would have tried to buy
or borrow it.”

Her eyes hardened. “He wouldn’t have succeeded. But he didn’t
even ask.”

“Then it wasn’t him. Has anyone else shown interest in it
lately?”

“Not many people know about it. The patent lawyer in DC is
making his fortune by charging me for the legal stuff. A few friends know what
I’ve been working on, but I trust them. They know not to talk about it too
much.”

She drummed her fingers on her thigh as she thought through
the possibilities. “A couple of months ago, I made some comments on a
discussion board. Nothing too specific. I was trying to do some market
research, asking questions about what people needed to make my machine useful.
Wait a minute, your Uncle Donnie wouldn’t have been Donald Johnson?”

He sat up straighter. “Yes. So you do know him!” He gave her
a triumphant look, as if he’d finally tricked her into confessing to a major
crime.

She shrugged. “We’ve never met in person, but he was active
on the discussion board. Asked some questions. Sent me a private e-mail. Wanted
to know if I really had such a machine. I didn’t give him a straight answer,
but I can see why he might have wanted to follow-up.”

Ryan sat back and nodded, a bit begrudgingly it seemed. “All
right, that makes sense. If he couldn’t pin you down by e-mail, he might have
come in person. Only to ask questions, not to steal anything.”

Camie wasn’t sure whether she believed any of this, but at
least they were making progress. “This is getting complicated. It’s time to
call in reinforcements. Give me a number where you can be reached. While you’re
at it, hand over some ID.” She gave him a smile a lot sweeter than her words. “Just
to make sure you really are who you say you are.”

He handed over his driver’s license and a business card with
a cell phone number. She studied the license, him, and the card, before handing
the license back. “You staying here in town?”

“Yes.”

She gave a quick nod and rose. “I’ll give you a call in the
morning. We’ll meet with a few of my friends. I’d like to get a couple more
opinions on all this.”

He rose as well and took a step toward her. He stood close
and looked down into her face, a position that could be considered looming. She
lifted her chin and gazed back. Something sprang between them that might have
been attraction or might have been a challenge.